Richard Spencer is one of the Daily Telegraph's Middle East correspondents. Married with three children, he was previously news editor, and then China correspondent for six years. He is based in Cairo.

Oh my god I'm starting to like the Fuwa

The collapse of the ticketing system for the Olympic Games is a bit of a laugh, really. It's also a relief as I haven't put in for any yet and it gives me a few more days to get my act together.

The Fuwa: very silly but somehow likeable

The Games Committee's computers crashed after eight million people tried to buy tickets online in the first hour. Another 3.8 million more tried to get tickets over the phone. And more queued, in some cases overnight, outside Bank of China branches.

And this is for the second tranche of tickets, mind.

This brings home to everyone, I hope, that China is different in some ways from other countries. One very big way, actually. Running an Olympic Games in a country with 10 million people (Greece) is very different from running the Games in one with 1300 million people. Perhaps we had all forgotten.

However, that's not really the point of this blog. This blog is triggered by a disconcerting realisation.

I have grown to like the Fuwa.

(That's the five Olympic mascots.)

Now, obviously, I don't like the name, which is silly, though better than the Friendlies, their previous name which really did make you want to strangle them.

Nor do I like the inherent compromise of failing to choose between five potential mascots and so choosing all of them.

I sympathise with individual complaints, such as the notion that the Tibetan antelope has been chosen as the model for one of them for patriotic/colonialist reasons.

Nevertheless, they smile, they dance, they look cute enough and they are put to good and sometimes witty branding use.

This is a real admission for me. When I first saw them, they irritated me like hell. But familiarity has in this case lessened contempt. I can't really explain it.

I dread to think what mascot London will have. Maybe a hologrammatised pickled shark, leaking slightly?

It will just as surely be chosen by committee as Beijing's, but at least China is used to doing everything by committee. British committees are terrible.

I judge, if nothing else, by comparing the Olympic logos: Beijing's has its detractors, but I don't understand them. It's clever – a twist on the character for Jing – it's stylish, referring subtly to traditional calligraphy and Chinese art, and it's flexible, twisting neatly into representations of all the different sporting events for signposts etc.

Which logo do you prefer?

I'd like to see London's dubious afro-hair person doing that. It might become even more obscene.